Travels – Page 11 – The Ramblings of MTBBill

A Nippon Weekend In Review

So I’m back in Japan for a couple of weeks of work. This marks the first time I have been here in the late January, early February timeframe. With the highs in the low 40’s and the night time temps below freezing it is downright cold for this San Diego Weather Weenie! Wednesday was spent playing planes, trains and automobiles but with the international date line thing after getting some sleep in the hotel I woke up to Friday morning. Friday was spent setting up for work that was start to start on Monday, give a presentation and make rounds of gripping and grinning. In the middle of all that I picked up a mountain bike rental that not only would be my primary means of transportation while here in Japan, it was also be my recreational vehicle. Friday evening was marked by the full blown onset of Jet Laaaaaag!

I have found that nothing helps to beat your body clock into a new time zone like some exercise. After some early morning work preps it was time to set off on the bike. Cold is cold, but the breeze was just downright biting so there was plenty of layering when donning my MTB apparel. As in all of it! I was pretty stoked with the hardtail rental I got. I was the first person to rent one of the newest members of their rental fleet, a well equipped (for a rental) Jamis Durango 1 hardtail.

The plan for Saturday was not to do any exploring, just stick to a series of trails that I know and love in the Fugatoyama area. It is a rather large chunk of mountainous open space that is for the most part quite rugged. It has been the source of many memorable head scratching intersections and brutal hike-a-bikes.

One nice change about riding here in the winter time is that you can see a lot more stuff as some of the trees have shed their leaves. The picture above would be of mostly a veggie tunnel in the summer. I had a good time out on the trails but was fairly skimpy on taking pictures.

The final segement of trail along this route dropped me out into an area called ghost-town for the number of old vine entwined buildings that are rusting back to mother nature. The little paths and streets quickly takes you back down into civlization where one can obtain tasty hot coffee out of a can. This is straight up yummy caffiene crack in a can! A nice warm can of coffee in the middle of a cold ride. Good Stuff! After the caffiene recharge there was a series of street riding back to my hotel. I caught up with old friends over a home made dinner that night. A mighty nice start to trip.

I did not get an early start on Sunday so as to let mother nature warm things up a bit before I went out. I had been wondering about a different route into the Fugatoyama area that in theory would cut out a bunch of the street riding. There is a foot bridge over the Yokosuka-Yokohama Expressway that seems to go from nothing but woods on one side of the expressway to nothing but woods on the other side of the expressway. There has got to be a trail there. I had never been able to figure out how to get down off the Fugatoyama ridgelines to this footbridge. I was going to figure this out from the opposited direction on this outing. The plan was to start from town and get up to the footbridge and then get up onto the ridgelines, where I should know where I am at at that point (That was the theory). So after some Google Earthing, some exporting and file conversions I had my GPS uploaded with with some waypoints and tracks to investigate. While not the most direct route to where I wanted to go the route took me through a pedistration tunnel. Pretty cool.

After a bit of here, there and to and fro I ended up at my first objective, an entrance into the Taura Plum Grove. Just after the spot pictured above I got in some stairway to heaven action.

The Taura Plum Grove is a park and while for the most part it is a rock sidewalk affair it was pretty cool looking. Springtime here when the plum trees are blooming must be a really awesome sight. Things are not flat here and my route was taking me to the upper west end of th park so it was a climbing affair.

Up near the top of the park the views open up. Tokyo Bay is in the distance and the large building in the distance on the left-hand side of the pictures is the Landmark Tower in Yokohama.

At the top of the park is a viewing tower where even better views of the area can be taken in.

I was more interested in what was just beyond the tower. Finally some dirt and the trail that would take me into the Fugatoyama/Muira Alps area. The trail became a skinny singletrack as soon as it left the park and before long I was across the footbridge and headed west towards the ridgelines.

I had a stupid grin on my face at this point.

Some nice little technical rooty bits to contend with. Big smile on my face here as well.

Okay, the smile on the face was about 50 feet back behind me at this point. The trail turnned sharply up a mega-steep ridge side. The picture does not do the steepness of this section justice. The good news was I was gaining elevation quickly even if I was not riding the bike. I was thinking that if this gets me up on the ridgeline where I think it might I will have lots of mostly downhill goodness to ease the kinks out of my hike-a-bike calves.

I did recognize the trail when I finally did make it up on the ridge. It was promptly followed by a big “Oh Shit”! I was much further to the south than I thought I would be and I was exactly at my most southern point of exploration along this particular ridgeline. The Oh-Shit was because I knew that I had three technical hella-steep hike-a-bike sections between me and the full-time ridable “money dirt” to the north. My GPS said I had one hour and 23 minutes before sunset. Farting around was no longer an option.

There were some exposure bits that are hidden very well by the flora, but wintertime has allowed them to me a bit more revealed. I had only ridden the section above only during the summer months before and I while I knew there was a bit of drop of here I had not idea just how freaking far one could tumble from here until today.

I made good time through the hike-a-bike bits and was soon back on the money dirt. I took the shot above and put away the camera and enjoyed some sweet flowing trails that was nearly all downhill to the north. I popped out of the woods just before sunset and enjoyed an extremely brisk street ride back to my hotel. A mighty fine way to get primed for a week of work ahead.

A Zushi – Kamakura stroll about

Okay I have been back from Japan for nearly a month now and I am just starting to get caught up of some of my goings on while in land of the rising sun. On one of my weekends there I set off to do a ride that I would involve a bit of this and a bit of that as far as riding goes. I know quite a few trails over here and while I wanted to get in some dirt time I was also interested in taking in some of the sights and sounds of Japan life as well. So I set off on my ride with a bit of eye for looking for new things along an old route.

I started out in Yokosuka on the eastern shore of the Muira peninsula (about an hour and change south of Tokyo) and pedaled the streets over to the city of Zushi. The route itself is always interesting with lots of Mom and Pop stores, stairways to temples and narrow streets and sidewalks. There is this school that I pass by along this route and while I Have seen kids at play on it a few times in the past for the most part it was empty during my passings. Today was quite different. There was some kind of the school function that involved both the parents, kids and facility. There were lots of chants, shouts, cheering and laughing on the playground. I was already well down the street before I decided I needed to check this out with more than a pedal by so I hit the brakes and went back.

There was a hilarious race being held that had me laugh my arse off. It looks like four groups of parents and children were split up into four teams. They were in lines at one end of the field and some guy/official was sitting in chair at the other end of the field. At the man’s feet were two burlap sack filled with something. One sack was small and the other was large. Once the whistle went off, the person at the front of each line ran across the field to their corresponding guy in the chair at the far end. As they approached the guy that had to play the guy in a single hand of “rock paper scissors”. If the runner won, they got the small sack, if they lost they got the big sack. Either way you the runners had to take their sack back across the field as fast as they could and hand it off to the next person in the line. For the subsequent runners, winning the rock-paper-scissors bout meant you got to keep or get the small sack. The entire race we exceptionally funny to watch.

After getting in my fill of giggles I soon veered off the narrow streets and onto trails on and around Mount Sengen. Most of the locals refer to this area as “Duck Pond” as the most common route has you starting at a small pond. It has rained quite a bit over the past week and the trails had a lot more moisture than I had expected.

The soil here is clay based and while it does not cake up on your tires at all , it is some exceptionally tricky stuff to ride on where power and balance but be carefully finessed to keep yourself from becoming an amateur geologist taking unplanned soil samples.

Now sprinkle in some leaves and wet roots over this clay and you have some exceptionally interesting bit of trail to content with. You can find more information about this kind of stuff on Slickopedia.

One of my favorite little curves along the route, the ferns in this area almost popping. Like many of the hiking trails in this area they have a long history of use to connect between the numerous temples throughout the peninsula. This particular trail dates back to around the mid 1300s. After dropping this trail off of west of Mount Sengen, I did a bit of residential street riding before hitting up another series of trails. Shortly after this I found myself at several trail junctions enjoying the scenery while I sorted through the scribbled on maps and disjointed GPS files floating around in my brain. Eventually I channeled “The Schwartz” and figured out my way (The other ways, are now officially on my to-do list).

The series of trails I was on at this point where leading me to Kamakura on the western side of peninsula on Segami Bay. These trails were created sometime between 1185 – 1333AD. It is really kind of cool knowing that you are riding a trail nearly four times as old as my home country.

The drop into Kamakura proper is not a gentle one, there is some seriously steep and slippery steps to contend with as most of your elevation is cashed out rather quickly.

The final bit of the trail before hitting tiny concrete pathways and alleyways that led down into the streets of Kamakura.

With its numerous temples and cultural shops and restaurants one could spend weeks enjoying Kamakura before they would feel as if they have done more than scratched the surface. For me it was a quick stroll along the streets.

The “scramble” crosswalk. All traffic briefly stops and pedestrian pandemonium ensues. Very cool to watch.

This was what I was really looking for on this day, some of the tasty street vendor offerings. This stuff is some form of grilled chicken skin/bits will tasty sauce and shredded veggies.

So what if is bad for me, but yeah there were a bunch of skinny Japanese folks eating this stuff so how bad can it be. After mowing this thing down and a bit of Japanese fashion watching I made my way back over to Zushi along the streets. I had big plans to hit of up the trails of Fugato-yama on my way back but by the time I reach the turnoff street my legs were wanking so I continued along the streets back to Yokosuka. Turns out I did just a few yards under 27 miles so I did not feel bad about bailing on the last riding area. Another good day to be on a bike and a great day to be out stroll around in Japan.

A Rising Sun Ride

Work has me in Japan for a few weeks so it was about time to get out and hit the trails. The fall weather here is pretty nice so I opted for a crack of dawn ride as my Saturday midday was already booked up. The previous day had been remarkably clear and tomorrow was supposed to be overcast so I was hoping to catch a window to see Mount Fuji at dawn on top of Ogusayama the tallest peak on the Muira Peninsula near Yokosuka. It was still pre-dawn when I rolled out of the hotel at 5AM but not by much. The ride along the city streets was really quite and almost surreal. It was pretty much just me and the cats along with couple of early risers like myself.

The street riding to the trails is mostly uphill the entire way. Before long I turned off the primary streets to smaller and smaller secondary streets as things became more rural and I started passing little family farms. I was nearly to the dirt trails when the rising sun joined me on the ride.

In 2004, I spent the better part of year living over here and I rode the Ogusuyama trail network numerous times so this place is kind of like home away from home dirt. Fall is just thinking about starting here so the colors are not happening yet but the leaves on some of the trees are starting to get a little sparse so views occur a little more often. This typically reveals just how steep some of the hillsides are that the trails cut across.

I made pretty descent time to the top of Ogusuyama, but there were some distant clouds so Fuji was in hiding. So while the planned far-view scenery was not to be had, the nearby stuff was pretty awesome as a clearing near the top of the mountain was flush with flowers.

After the stopping to smell the flowers break, I opted to continue heading west down the other side of the mountain to the Segami Bay side of the pennisula. The trail I took has a lot of fun flowing sections but it makes you work for them as thier are some really rooty sections that require all of your bike handling attention. If the roots alone were not interesting enough the soil in this area is mostly clay and with the rains a few days prior the bare clay sections had traction qualities that are best described as “I Can’t Believe Its Not Butter”. There were many times along this trail where I’m sure my facial expression would be best described as being that of a “terrified smile”.

Below is one of the sections that was just blissfully fun.

Eventually the trail came out on a tiny litte street about the size of the golf cart path that feed to a series of other streets each a little wider than the last until I came out onto the main two-lane street down by Segami Bay. I did a bit of flat-land street riding to connect up with a another street that would turn into a fireroad that would take me back up into the Ogsuyama area. Before getting back into the climbing gears, I had to grab a bit of morning coffee. The vending machines over have canned hot coffee which are simply awesome. I am big-time addict of these coffees and being able to grab a quick fix on a ride is pretty awesome. Coffee Crack in a can — Good Stuff!

After getting my coffee buzz on I was climbing back up the mountain. The grade was a bit steep in spots and it felt good to get some burn in the legs. Once back up near the top of Ogusuyama I took a different set of trails that would take me to southeast and down into the community of Kinugasa. As I rolled off the trail I was quitely in the town which was fully awake now with lots cars and people fluttering about getting their day taken care of. It was a little bit taken back by it at first due to the juxtaposition of the sleepiness of the streets a few hours ago. From there is was quite a bit of street riding back to the hotel and before long I too was fluttering about getting the rest of my day taken care. I think I am going to have to do another rising sun ride before I leave Japan.

Newberry Hills

Here are a few pictures from one of the last rides I did while up in the Seattle area.

This place was pretty close to Bremerton and was a mesh of tight and twisty XC trails.

The trails were for the most part fairly atechnical but I have to admit that muscling around my slack and long wheel-based bike around the twisty bits was a bit challenging ing spots.

The trail elves have been at work out here.

While I had a good time riding out here, I would have really loved to have had my snappy hardtail to flick around this trail network. Right tool for the job or not anytime you can get out in the woods is a good time in my book.

Kachess Ridge, WA

This past weekend, I headed out over the Snoqualmie Pass area about 70 miles east of Seattle to check out the Kachess Ridge trail. I have passed through this area a handful of times over the years between MTB and flyfishing trips and I had eye-balled the mountains through here on every occasion. The ride is billed as dirt road climb that seems to go on forever followed by a singletrack that you wish would go on forever. It was time to find out first hand.

The first part of the ride is along a mildly undulating dirt road that heads north above the eastern shore of Kachess Lake. The lake is quite large but its rather difficult to see the expansive view due to all the trees. It was kinda fun keeping an eye out for the open spots in the trees here and there than offered views of the lake. This was a good mellow six miles or so of a cruising warm up.

The cruise fest was soon over as I turned up onto a forest road that started working its way up onto the mountain. The grade was fairly steep in places and I was reminded that my UZZI is optimized for festivities in the downhill direction. I would gain around 2,700 feet in just under the next five miles. There were numerous little brooks along the climb. I’m nearly always surprised at how loud even just a little bit of moving water can be. I couple of times I was expecting a torrent of water ahead only to see just a little spit of water in a real hurry.

The further up the climb I went the better views kept getting and with the lake as a reference below it was easy to see how much elevation you were gaining. I’m pretty sure I was past the halfway point when the iconic Mount Rainer starting making an appearance above the far ridgeline. While working up the climb and stopping here and there to take some pictures, I met up with a couple local riders, Mike and Justin, working thier way up as well. I was pretty happy to see that they were also working some long-legged bikes up the ridge as well as it gave some hints that maybe the downhill had some terrain worthy of the rigs.

We would leap frog each other a couple of times before the forest road eventually went up to a saddle on Kachess Ridge. The photo above completely fails to capture the true beauty of the landscape.

From the saddle it was time to the leave the forest road behind and hit some singletrack. Here is where Mike and Justin’s local knowledge came in mighty handy as the published route does not include a newer trail that is more contouring and a good bit of fun. The kind of fun you have when narrow trails test your ability to stay on line while wildflowers brush your legs on both sides. This first bit of trail was a sweet little descent that all too soon rejoined the main trail and turned into a tough hike-a-bike over the 1/3rd of a mile or so up to the saddle between the spires in the photo above.

Above are some of the views along the hike a bike section. The hike-a-bike was both steep and rocky with some scree to contend with. Some of my best epic adventures ever have included hike-a-bike bits so I tend to view them with a sense of optimism for trail goodness to come. Then again I have had some nearly former friends threaten to eviscerate me on the side of the trail for some “new stuff” exploration gone wrong.

For this SoCal boy, anytime a hike-a-bike across snow in mid-August is required, it automaticaly puts the ride soundly in the cool category.

Once over the saddle, sweet trail goodness was indeed in bountiful supply. It was good. Real Good. So much so that I selfishly (and unapologetically) blazed past a ton of Kodiak moments as the trail shed elevation through alpine meadows and evergreen forest goodness.

For you SoCal Peeps, there were sections of rocky chunky bits that conjured up thoughts of Noble Canyon while other sections would make you think of the steep hillsides of the Santa Ana River Trail except the trail was pointed in a much more downhill direction. Of course this trail had the awesome Pacific Northwest forested feel to it with lots of greenery. Yeah it was good!

The final section of the trail gets pretty steep as it cashes out over 1,000 feet of elevation in a little over a mile. There are plenty of switchbacks through this section and some of them can sneak up on you. Additionally there are a couple of these switchbacks where you simply do not want to blow the turn due to the exposure. I wish I had more pictures of this section to share but the little devil on my left shoulder was whispering evil things in my ear like “EFFF Everyone Else –Ride You Fool, Ride!”. The only thing I was able to make out over all wind noise coming from angel on right shoulder was lots of giddy giggles and “Whaaat heeeee saaaaid!” This was not a suckie day to be on a bike!

A Couple More Duthie Hill Pics

Ahhh more stuff from Duthie Hill

I was here earlier in the year and since then the trail elves have been busy working on Phase 2 of the Duthie Hill Park. I like this over-under setup, cool.

The real reason for this post it that I did a tweaks to the blog software and only way to fully test it is to make a new post.

So isn’t these much better than some “This is only a test” image?

Dirt Time in Washington

So I have been in Seattle for a couple of weeks on a work gig but just managed to hit the dirt. Man can not live in the dirt alone so I have been enjoying some of the other wonders of the Pacfic Northwest, thier great microbrews. In addition to the 10+ brewpubs in the Seattle area I have swelled hoppy goodness at, I attended the Bremerton Beer Festival. The following weekend was spent in Portland for the 24th Aniversary of the Oregon Brewer’s Festival. In addition to the madhouse that was the Brewer’s Festival some of the local goods were also sample directly at the source. Deschutes, Bridgeport, Widmer, Tugboat and Amensia Brewing were on the “tour”. Needless to I was stupidly happy about sampling some of the best beers around. My liver on the other hand felt differently after taking more than one for the team.

As part of the MTBBill Liver Recovery Act of 2011, it was time to get some pedals turning. The I-5 Colonnade MTB Skills Park is less than 10 minutes from where I’m staying so it is always good for a quick afterwork fix.

Working part of the weekend is part of the work gig for this project, but Green Mountain was close enough to where I was working to allow for some grunting and grinning in the dirt after work.

Duthie Hill Mountain Bike Park is the Seattle areas second MTB Skills Park and it is simply awesome. With 120 acres to work with they are produced a trail network that caters to nearly all types of riders. Wither you are looking to get your wheels in the air…..

Or wither you want to get that natural outdoor experience on a meandering trail through the trees. This place has all of that right in Seattle’s backyard.

One of the lines I did not hit out here 🙂 I believe this trail was Semper Dirticus. The freeride double black diamond trails here are quite impressive. On this trip it was mostly from a spectactor perspective. I got the bike, I just need to develop the skills and get some testicular growth happening. I did hit some of the stunts and tagged my largest gap to date to thier is hope that I will get intouch with my inner hucker at some point.

One of favorites from a trail with features perspective was Ryan’s Eternal Flow. It is more of XC trail with stunts and features more so than a series of features with a trail between them. Considering how close this place is I will certainly be back a few more times before this work trip is done.

Japanese Gulch – Washington State

I’m catching up on some of pictures and such from my recent Washington trip. One of the places I could hit up right easy from work was Japanese Gultch located in Mukilteo. Plenty of singletrack right in town and a good way to burn off the workday stress.

One of the things I like about this area, is minutes onto the trail and it seems like you are far away, even though you are right in town.

Yep there is narrow singletrack to be had.

Both hardtails and long-legged bikes can be enjoyed out here.

One nice thing about this right is that just a quick jaunt from the bottom trailhead is the Diamondknot Brewery which has some mighty tasty creations to finish off the ride with. The Industrial IPA is mighty yummy and always ask if the they have a seasonal batch of the Shipwreck IPA brewed up. It is not to be missed.

Views Off The Bike From The “Away From Home Office”

So I have wrapped up my work project in Everett Washington. It took a bit longer than expected and I’m glad to be back home. I did get in some tasty miles of singletrack during my stay but between the work, weather and a nasty bit of crud I had for a while, I did not get my dirt fix as often as I would have liked. So why do we ride our bikes? Geez there will be just about as many answers to that question as there are folks who decide to through a leg over a bike in the first place. I believe that is part of what mountainbiking so special in the first place. One pursuit with countless permutations of living life and generally having a good time.

One of those “answers” for me is seeing beautiful scenery and the occasional critter or two. I was extremely fortunate to score a pretty awesome place to stay during my visit. It was a quint little beach house on Possession Sound that simply was fantastic from an experience standpoint. It made coming home from the “office” everyday seem like a mini-vacation. When the weather was cooperating there was some incredible views to be had right from the dinner table and deck. By the end of the first week I had adopted a routine getting up a couple hours earlier than I really need to just to enjoy the views and a few relaxing cups of coffee before starting my day. In the evening the place just begged you to crack open a bottle of one of the Pacific Northwest’s tasty microbrews. The views were often a daily dose of “answers” if you will.

Whales…..Yes I said whales. Whales were a common sight right out the front windows. A few gray whales liked to come into the shallows and feed on whatever tasty critters where on the bottom here. They would swim sideways and use their tails to stir up the bottom and then spin around and scoop up and filter out all of the tasty snacks.

They would work down the shoreline and eventually head back out to deeper water and off to the wherever the next buffet spot was located.

They made plenty of noise with all of their activity and sometimes the sounds be the first thing that would draw my attention their “visit”. Seeing these majestic critters was certainly a life enriching experience.

The tidal shift is pretty dramatic in this area. The lines of “puddles” you see in the photo above are the divots created by the whales when they are feeding at high tide. They are typically 6-8 feet long each.

It was quite a trip to walk out onto the beach at low tide and meander around where the whales were at less than 24 hours ago.

Even when there were no critters close by, the views were often of the quality that many us pedal for miles to seek out.

I kept my camera nearby all the time as you never knew what was going to pop up on the beach at any moment. This pair of otters were in hurry to get their take-out order home before it got warm.

So while I did not get in as many miles as I would have liked on this trip, I got of wealth of “answers” that I typically only find along quite singletrack of the backcountry.

Fort Ebey and Kettles Park

The weather reports were calling for clear skies and a warm day (that would be above 50 by Seattle standards this time of year) on Saturday. In the coastal Pacific Northwest one should pay attention for such musings from the weather folks.

Saturday morning was indeed amazingly great looking and I wasted little time in getting packed up and headed out. The destination today was Fort Ebey State Park combined with the adjacent Kettles Park. After some nice scenery from the ferry over to Whidbey Island and a pretty ride through the countryside I parked at one of the trailheads at Kettles Park. The plan was to ride some of the trails westwardly through Kettles Park over into Fort Ebey State Park. I would try to do all of the Fort Ebey stuff and then work my way back through the rest of Kettles Park on the way back. The trails of Kettles were mostly buff goodness with a combination of quick flowliness and tight twisty stuff that required a bit of shoulder tucking here and there to avoid the trees.

The fun singletrack continued after crossing into Fort Ebey State Park. I intentionally tried to stitch together the most serendipitous route possible to get onto as many trails as I could without too many loop backs. The trails I took as I worked my way up to the west coast of the island and the Fort’s old gun battery were Grade A forested goodness that were a real cross country pleasure.

Fort Ebey’s original purpose was to serve as gun battery defending Puget Sound during WWII. Construction began in 1942 and the two gun batteries were placed in service in 1943. In 1965 Fort Ebey started being converted to a state park. Today visitors can walk through the bunkers and the foundation for the turrets now make a nice bench in which to enjoy the views.

The most popular and iconic trails here is the Bluff Trail. Its proximity to the edge of the bluff and stunning views offered of the Strait of Juan De Fuca and the Olympic Peninsula on clear days is truly an incredible thing to experience. Unfortunately bicycles are not longer allowed on most of the trail. There are a couple of sections to the south of the battery that are still open to bikes and they should not be missed.

I rode the open sections of the Bluff Trail in both directions just to get the full experience.

At the south end of the park is the Cedar Hollow loop which also offers more of the killer views. It is well worth some of the grunt work involved to get to the views.

After I got done looping in all the Fort Ebey trails I made my way back into Kettles Park and enjoyed some really nice singletrack through the forest. I was feeling pretty pooped at this point, but the temperature had climbed to 68 degrees so it was pretty easy to keep on going despite complaining legs. I pretty much rode all the trails of Kettles which brought the mileage up to a little over 20 miles before I called it a day. A day that I call simply awesome! Expect more information on this place the site in the coming weeks.